The field of this invention relates to toys and more particularly to a motorized toy airplane.
There is a wide variety of toy airplanes, such as hand launch gliders, gas operated planes, and so forth. These types of planes are what are commonly termed fixed-wing aircraft.
However, there are known movable-wing aircraft in which the flight of the airplane is produced by the flapping of the wings. This type of aircraft is referred to generally as an ornithopter. In the past, these movable-wing aircraft have employed only a single wing on each side of the fuselage and the flapping motion is produced through a crank assembly. Normally, the motive force supplied to the wing takes the form of a tightened rubberband.
In the operation of the previously known type of movable-wing aircraft, the force from the band is transmitted to the wings in an uneven manner due to the crank assembly. The main component of the force is transmitted to the wing as the wing is moved between the top dead center and the bottom dead center position of the wing. Because of this inherent uneven torque transfer to the wings, the wings are moved in a jerking manner. Not only does this type of movement produce a rapid noise pattern, but also produces very poor flight characteristics of the airplane. Actually, prior to the subject matter of this invention, the flying for any distance of a movable wing type of airplane toy was just unheard of.